Hellbound
by Lily10
Summary: Alt, post-series. Six wishes that C.C and Lelouch will never get.


**Title**: Hellbound  
**Author**: Lily  
**Series**: Code Geass r2  
**Pairings**: C.C./Lelouch

* * *

"Tell me a story." Nunnally begs as Lelouch tucks her in and kisses her goodnight.

There's a story somewhere in the back of his mind that he retrieves. It has two children (brother and sister), and breadcrumbs, and a careless father, and a witch of some sort. All the good stories have witches in them, he recalls.

"Once upon a time," he begins.

* * *

_One._

* * *

Zero is no more. The broken remnants of his mask lies quaking in his grasp.

"C.C." His voice is steady even though his pulse is going to tear his skin with it's rapid rhythm, and his limbs are going to shatter with shaking. There's a pain in his chest that he doesn't think is going to go away.

"It is over," she says distantly.

"C.C." His breathing is smoky and it feels as if there is a mellowing sort of grazing inside his lungs; a file wearing away at his ribs. A strange, wounded noise gurgles from the back of his throat, threatening to eat away the fibers that hold him together as he stares searchingly up at her like a lost child.

And then he is crying. Deep shuddering howls of sorrow, true sorrow, writhing thickly in his throat that eats away at his heart; a stain on his soul that he cannot wipe away. Cries until he collapses against the ground, face burying in the dirt.

Lelouch wishes life to be simple.

* * *

_Two._

* * *

They both know that Time is slipping away like a midsummer tide. Lying broken and bleeding, Lelouch's flesh and pride are torn and burned with the imprints of failure.

C.C. finds him lying in the grass and stretches out beside him. "If you could be anything in the whole world, what would you be?" He questions, idly.

Fluttering her eyelashes as if she is warding off a dancing moth, C.C.'s eyes grow heavy lidded, plunging her face into the realm of dream-like expression.

She wants to lie on the ground beside him forever and if she closes her eyes long enough and does not move at all, it's like she _is_ nothing. It isn't sleep and it isn't a quiet prayer. It's just disappearing, with no sound or heat or pain. An absence in time where she is not a _witch _or _C.C._ or even anything at all_. _

"Nothing," she sighs and really, Nothing is the best feeling in the world.

C.C. dreams of dying underneath glistening clear blue skies and great radiant suns.

* * *

_Three._

* * *

In the middle of the night while gasping for breath as if he'd been underwater for an eternity, his eyes snap open. His arms spasms, and he clenches his fists, eyes widening as he stares up at the ceiling unblinkingly.

**"**Nunnally,**"** Lelouch sobs while C.C. turns over beside him.

"Shhh," she whispers, pale hands holding him steadily as he trembles with emotion.

Sometimes she is able to soothe him back into silence but other times he is too far gone to understand.

**"**Kill me!**" **The scream tears from his throat, a sound he barely recognizes as his own voice. His legs kick out, sheets twisting hazardously beneath him as he screams and screams for his sister and the perfect world he was going to give her and all the lives he took and continued to steal. Too much, too soon for him to handle.

He screams at everything he hadn't asked for, and screams at everything that had been taken away. Great gulping screams that echo over and over. He screams at C.C.'s look of pity, and screams even harder when her face blurs into inky spots through a haze of bitter tears.

Lelouch seeks purpose.

* * *

_Four._

* * *

It is strange, C.C. thinks, the dynamic of their partnership. And she can't even figure out what parts of this life she hates and which ones she loves or if they are one and the same.

She's not a witch. She's a ghost. Haunting corridors and shadowed corners; peering out at him when he thinks he's alone. Her fingers grab the hem of his coat as he brushes by, and the small sound her throat makes shouldn't come from anyone over the age of four. And if she doesn't haunt places, her eyes certainly haunt people. Because she looks at him, and looks, and she knows she knows she knows.

"You will never be alone again." He reminds her. Because they are both doomed in this together.

For a brief moment, she feels human again, feels the wheel of her existence spin on it's rotting hinge, wheeling away, back to life, or maybe death, back to being, back to breath… It affects her so deeply that something rose in her chest, a sob, or a laugh, or a shout--it is too strong for just one name, too powerful to contain.

C.C. longs to be pure.

* * *

_Five._

* * *

C.C. begins to do something she hasn't done since the Beginning: count the days passing. Lelouch marks the days as well. Another day passes and C.C. makes another scratch on her paper. Lelouch makes another scratch on her skin, biting his way along her collarbone while the sun sets and the moon takes its place.

They want to be free and ask for nothing more. After all, Time has run out and they are both hellbound anyway.

* * *

_Six._

* * *

"And they lived happily ever after," he finishes.

* * *


End file.
